To wonder what is dangerous about my child’s lunch

[NameChangeAK]

I received a message from school today saying my child’s lunch contained a prohibited item and to please review the policy “as there are children with severe allergies and it’s dangerous not to comply”

I don’t usually provide packed lunches - DC has school meals, but they did like todays meal options.

Ive responded and asked what the item was but waiting for a response, but I’m confused - it’s clearly a nut free school but I can’t see anything else anywhere about other banned foods

the packed lunch contained:

• ham sandwich (with butter) on brown bread
• apple
• frube (strawberry flavour)
• carton of own brand apple juice
• Pepperami
• babybel

any ideas what could be the problem or Aibu to think they’ve mistaken the ham as peanut butter or something ridiculous?

The problem with the perfect lunch poster, is she suggested a tuna sandwich.
Tinned tuna, with shop mayonnaise and bread... Why is that better? because that's all processed and ultra processed too.

@WittiestUsernameEver tbf tuna isn't ultra processed. It's processed.

Ham can be just processed but usually supermarket ham is ultra processed.

Mayonnaise js UPF and again bread usually is if from supermarket.

@WittiestUsernameEver sorry just seen you said processed or ultra processed.

Just explaining the etiquette of MN.

Also a bit bizarre and verging on rude to think that by just reading the OP and no more, you would have something useful to add that wouldn't have been covered in five days and nearly 500 posts.

There was a thread on here once where a poster asked for suggestions about her persistent bloating. For months afterwards, people would come on and suggest seeing her GP or cutting out gluten - as she was posting about her journey through terminal ovarian cancer. Always RTFT.

If I sent my DC with a tuna sandwich it would return untouched.

Same! DD4 likes mackerel, white fish, salmon, pilchards, kippers, crab, lobster, prawns etc.... it won't touch tuna lol.

Probably but I don't recall anaphylaxis being very common though. I think that today's children are exposed to foods that we would never have come across at the same age.

Allergies have increased considerably in the last 30 years. This has been observed and is being studied to establish why. Theories range from delivery method at birth, to the increased use of antibacterials in the house, to pollution, to ultra processing of foods, to exposure to a wider range of foods at an early age. But no one really understands it yet.

We've also had massive awareness campaigns so people look for it and consider it more.

Then there's changes in expectations. In the past if you had a nut allergy, you simply didn't eat out because you couldn't take the risk. You took your own food, you ate at home or you went hungry. The end. Now we expect everyone to be included and catered for. My brother had a severe nut and egg allergy and this was how my parents handled it. Now youd go to a restaurant and expect health and safety to protect you. This in turn is leading to greater awareness because people see comments about allergies every time they pick up a menu.

This doesn't mean lots of people didn't have severe allergies. The reality is if you go back only a few decades, if you had a severe allergy your chances of dying younger were liable to be much higher and no one actually took note. It was just something that happened. Now those children grow up and become adults and everyone would think it horrendous for them to have an entirely preventable death.

Was it gluten free bread? 😁

If that's the new name for Frubes, yes.

😂😂😂

That made me snigger

I understand banning nuts for Nut allergies as inhaling can trigger anaphylaxis but not banning dairy as surely it has to be ingested . It might be the apple juice they’ve banned due to sugar content

@YvesA
It
Was
The
Frube
(established about a million posts back)
😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂

It was the frube.

Milk allergies can be airborne, or indeed contact anaphylactic.

F
R
U
B
E

FIVE cubes of Gruyère?? The horror! Don’t you realise 2-3 cubes are sufficient?

I’ve never heard of dairy being airborne ( except when powdered or frothed ) that’s a tough allergen to be protected from I’d imagine

Frubes have a tendency to be airborne though.

Yeah the kids like to muck around with them

1 in 12 children now have allergies. My DD is one of them and shes the first of our family.

I think it's because so many babies and foetuses are given antibiotics preventatively which damages their guts before they have a chance to get established.

For context, my DM birthed 2 children. In the first case it was a c section and in the second her waters broke a while before the baby was born. In neither case was she given antibiotics but if that happened today both her children would have been given them pre-natally, and her children would therefore have started life with their immune system compromised, sometimes irreparably so.

There are other factors but that's a big one.

For those saying they are glad their children are adults now and they don’t have to deal with it, allergies can occur at any time. So you might not have to negotiate school pack lunches but you may have to family dinners if a relative develops allergies, or indeed develop one yourself.

A relative in her 50s ended up going to hospital in an ambulance when they had an anaphylactic reaction after being in contact (not even eating it) with a foodstuff that they had not reacted like that to before. Now has to carry an epi pen. Someone else developed a dairy allergy as an adult.

Why should pupils go short on calcium because others are allergic to it? As long as the food doesn't come in contact with them it should be ok. I don't think pepperamis have much nutritional value though.

People don't have to go short on calcium or anything else - they can eat whatever they want, elsewhere. But if you're a person with a life-threatening allergy, the presence or absence of that allergen in someone's lunchbox could be the difference between life and death.

"It should be ok" is all well and good, until it isn't ok. Then there's a dead child or staff member, a devastated family and a traumatised school. All so that someone could have a yoghurt at lunch. Is your child's yoghurt preference worth more than another child's life?

Kids once all had free milk in school and didn't hear of that being stopped for allergies. They had it as was good for bones and contained protein. Wonder why children now have so much intolerance?